


The River

by bansheesquad (deathwailart)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Older Characters, Scotland, Scottish Character, Scottish Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 07:43:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20560706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/bansheesquad
Summary: Usually the bodies didn't talk and how the River Clyde gives back her dead.





	The River

A solitary boat made its way down the Clyde in the still morning air, cutting through murky water that had been the lifeblood of industry, now rendered less and less each passing year as memory dimmed of the glory days of the shipyards. At least the blaring of the traffic was muted since it was too early for rush hour yet, the worst of the revellers – when did Glasgow truly sleep after all? – safely home, or some of them sleeping it off in Central maybe if they'd missed their train home, as one small figure huddled deeper into her jacket. Well, jackets, being the sort who knew that you needed a warm fleece under a hardy sensible wax jacket to keep yourself dry too and to stop the wind cutting right through to the bone, a woman grey as the sky overhead that promised it'd be bucketing well before most folk got themselves to work. Gnarled hands, the knuckles swollen from arthritis held tight to the oars; wouldn't do to go steering into the trees this side of the embankment where it was mostly empty plastic bags from the off licence bobbing up and down, straddling the fine line between ghost and out of place jellyfish depending on the light. Empties had been tossed and she could hear them bumping against the hull. She'd ring the council when she got in, she decided, though chances were they wouldn't bother, empty promises to appease some dithering old biddy who had nothing better to do with her time but complain at them.  
  
The morning was raw, her hands on the oars past numb and the thought of her flask more than enticing when she noticed the scattering of leaves and branches that had her stopping. Might've been a bird, maybe empties being tossed or just the weans tossing stick but you didn't get to be her age doing what she did doubting your gut. So with a grim set to her mouth, she started forward again, the boat chugging along as she kept a watchful eye out. More branches mingled with old rubbish that bobbed in the water where it had been sat for weeks and months until being disturbed, all of it parting as she carefully made her way forward to the shadow of the bridge. Something pale stood out.  
  
Something out of the water.  
  
Her breath caught in her throat and with her free hand she crossed herself which was a foolish thing to be doing sometimes, why would it even help her after all but oh she'd never quite gotten all that out of her, anyway she still went to mass and all the rest didn't she? Weaving round a binbag spilling all matter of filth out in the river – a crying shame so it was that folk just saw fit to dump their rubbish into the river or close enough that it'd end up in it even in this day and age when they should bloody know better – she slowed down again in the dim light. Her eyes weren't what they used to be these days, not even if she put her glasses on (not that she did, she daren't fumble in her pocket for them now) as she was forced to squint in the darkness. She couldn't risk losing what she'd seen. Whatever it was.  
  
"You shouldn't call it an it," she chided herself, comforted by the words even as some great heavy thing lumbered over the bridge above her, the fear of God going straight through her. You never knew the last time anyone had done work on these bridges and the speed some of the lorries and busses went thundering along at-- "Rude to go calling things it."  
  
If it was a thing. Not that it mattered too much, it was just her out here on her own, talking to herself as she did because that was comforting and maybe the habit you got into when you got on in years. She remembered her grandmother doing it when she'd been younger, not so much what her own parents had done but hadn't she been busy herself in those days?  
  
"W-who's th-th-there?" Out of the dark came a voice, all teeth chattering and froggy croak, enough to tug at one old woman's heartstrings. Or maybe it was the angina, she got those two mixed up from time to time, probably should've told the doctor that a bit more often but half the time they fobbed you off anyway, just in there to take up space weren't you and why didn't you die already, all these old folk taking up space—  
  
"You all right there dearie? I'm Effie, you must be awfy cold, I've a flask of tea here and I promise no harm'll come to you. Can I come a wee bitty closer hen?"  
  
"I don't…" The voice stopped, broke off into a great shuddering breath. "I don't feel right?"  
  
"You've been out here God knows how long." It was tricky to talk and steer the boat at the same time but Effie had learnt; she hadn't wanted to give it up when Hector had died despite the protests from the children. "If I get myself over do you think you can get yourself in?"  
  
"I—just a—just a sec- a second."   
  
Maybe it wasn't just cold, maybe it was shock too, not that Effie could blame whoever this poor lassie was as she steered over as close as she dared, a soft splash as the girl – she sounded like a girl but then Effie had lived a long time, it was easy to be mistaken – slipped down the steep bank and into the boat, all soaked through, hands frozen when one grabbed Effie's on the way into the boat, a foot sloshing into the water before she hunkered down same as a cat over a bath. A wallydraigle, Effie's mother would've named her, but Effie's mother had been a different generation entirely as Effie smiled encouragingly.  
  
"Dinnae worry I'll no' let us tip over, you'll be all right. Let me get a blanket round so you get some heat in you, there you are—" It was all too easy to chatter away worse than a daft budgie as she bundled the girl up, pouring her tea too for good measure but it gave her a chance to look for any sort of injuries at the same time though it was hard to see too much: a soaking wet girl (they all turned to girls when someone was Effie's age, the few luxuries of joining the blue rinse brigade as it were), in last night's party dress (a right flashy number, must've been out at the dancing not that they called it that now), and gone so pale every blue vein stood out in stark relief. "Now, can you tell me your name and how you ended up all the way down here? I'm not going to judge, that's not my place I just want to see you safely home or on your way somewhere you need to get to. Hopefully warm and dry."  
  
Bent over the tea that she'd wrapped both hands around, the girl inhaled the steam, giving off the stench of wet leaves and damp earth. "I'm Isla," she managed biting her lip before her whole face crumpled, tears washing away the remnants of her makeup that the river hadn't dragged away already. "I don't—I don't remember. Why don't I—I think I was out? I'm dressed like this so I was out and then my head hurts now and I woke up there and I was cold and wet and I don't—I don't know—"  
  
When the hiccupping started Effie had already gathered her up before the sobbing could start in earnest, as if they'd been punched out of her, muttering nonsense than started as a flood and became a trickle as she dried Isla's face with the heavy tartan blanket (some petrol station's finest, witness to far worse than one girl's tears) and rocked her through it.   
  
"There's no harm in not remembering." She lied. Or part of her lied. There was a bit of harm in not remembering what had you waking up frozen to the bone by the River Clyde with a sore head but that couldn't be helped out here for the moment. "Well I've had not waking up places I wouldn't remember getting to or back in the days where the station staff at Central used to let me and my pals sleep on the train when the station was all locked up and the workers would wake us up in the morning. So I'll tell you what, why don't we get you in so you can get warm and dry. Do you want to go to the hospital for your head? Or the polis—"  
  
"No polis!" Isla's interruption was sharp, her head snapping up as if to glare but her eyes were too red-rimmed and glassy for it to work. "My head doesn't hurt enough for the hospital."  
  
"Well if you change your mind let me know. And if things hurt worse then you let me know that too."  
  
Effie privately disagreed on the hospital count but there was no blood that she'd seen though they were under the bridge still and in the dark but she wasn't about to argue, no with someone skittish as this as she set off in the direction of home.  
  
Usually the bodies didn't talk.  
  


* * *

  
  
The River Clyde always gave back her dead was the thing. The River Clyde always gave back her dead in the end once you got away from the fast flowing parts and Effie had come to know that long ago; you couldn't live alongside it without knowing that. And so when Effie had taken Hector's boat ("it'll keep me active," she'd told the children who'd wanted to sell it, and her unable to bear to part with something that had been part of his life where he'd tried teaching them how to fish until they'd been too busy for it, a different generation, a different language, "it's good for me, I cannae see me at water aerobics.") she'd done it with the understanding that she'd find terrible things.   
  
She'd seen worse. You didn't grow up when she had navigating the secret ways to walk home when the whole city had been gripped by fervour, when she'd bitten her tongue when asked about any teams same as her children had, same as her grandchildren probably did too even if they had the shiny posters now about all of it, without seeing lads bloodied up. Mouths slashed. But that had been growing up in The Calton before she'd gotten married and away from it, that old familiar graffiti still etched behind her eyes that most would rather forget about and move on from.  
  
All it meant was that even in her seventies, her eighties beckoning such as they were, Effie was prepared and content to take the boat out and to row up and down while she still could because it was better than being some wee old widowed wifey sat in her flat watching daytime telly or knitting or whatever they expected old wifeys to be doing, either talking to or helping the folk who ended up in the river because life was hard and terrible and sad and lonely, and so many of them made mistakes, regretted it once they were in, and she did what she could to get them handed off, said a prayer that someone might help them. And all too often she hauled out a body that they might see a proper burial. That the loved ones might not find peace – God knew she still missed Hector terribly and he'd been away ten years now – but at least they'd _know_.   
  
But those were bodies. Or they were people. And they were dead or they weren't. And they talked or they didn't.  
  
None of them were what she brought home that morning once she got the boat tied off.  
  


* * *

  
  
"Here you are now; in you come and get yourself a heat." After she'd gotten the boat tied off, by some miracle Effie and Isla had avoided any of Effie's neighbours on the way from there to her flat where she'd taken the lift that jolted and shuddered up the several flights to where she lived. It was a work day and a school day though, people were busy enough as it was, the way Effie had been.  
  
Not that she wasn't now but life had a different sort of pace. Different routines. And folk never seemed to think you had anything worthwhile doing with your time.   
  
Oh she wasn't bitter. Well, not always. Sometimes, when the assumptions were being made. But in times such as these when her neighbour across the hall – a widower much the same she was a widow, their respective children vying desperately to fix them up to their mutual bafflement or indeed the young mother who had the new baby that sometimes walked the halls at odd hours to see if it'd settle her any who lived downstairs – might have been about then it was a blessing to not be in demand as she had been in her younger years. (God forbid that in her twenties she'd thought forty old, sixty decrepit. How she looked back upon forty with a fondness but not one ounce of regret.)  
  
Isla, still dripping, tiptoed into the flat as Effie hung up both her coats, kicked off her big sturdy boots because you wanted a sensible option for being on a boat or near the water where you were liable to slip, and she'd had pals of hers go into hospital with a broken hip to never be right or leave it again. Them calling it the Death Star didn't help, but the part of her that had raised children, and grandchildren, listening to them chatter as she got the tea on or hustled them to and fro, couldn't help but think that anywhere that really had Death Stars the big new hospital got the name from where they had all those other things like droids ("not robots granny" one of the younger granddaughters had pointed out last Halloween, all ready for the guising dressed up like the lead girl from the new film) and spaceships then folk wouldn't be dying in corridors waiting for beds. Effie couldn't decide if that was normal or not. Or if her not shivering was normal or not.  
  
Really she should be ringing the hospital, getting someone round to convince the girl to go to the hospital but here she was sticking the heating on, guiding her to a seat, getting the kettle on too because what wasn't made better with a cup of tea? And besides, Effie herself was cold down to her very bones, hands fumbling to get the electric fire going ("that's a fire hazard, you'll need to get yourself shot of that thing," one of the weans had said and she couldn't remember, shame she couldn't forget them saying it in the first place when they couldn't mind their own business in the first place.)  
  
Bustling through to the spare room – a luxury in a flat but she wasn't as bad off as some, no one had come for her place and that whole tax the Tory lot had gone on about – she ferreted through the drawers, came up with some options, got a big towel out the linen cupboard and smiled in the doorway.  
  
"Hopefully these'll fit, one of the granddaughters that she keeps here if she's stopping the night from school." Uni, really but school was school wasn't it? What did it matter too much but the pride that burst in Effie to see them doing better for themselves than she or Hector had ever dreamt in their own youth? "The toilet's through there if you're wanting to get yourself changed into something warm and dry, I've got a towel too."  
  
"Thanks," Isla's teeth didn't chatter as she spoke but she clutched the blanket tight about her still in one white-knuckled hand that had the look of alien things seen on the telly. Bird's talons, strange undersea fish that never saw the sun. "Would it be rude to have a shower?"  
  
"Of course not hen, you'll want to get all that river muck off you. You go get yourself sorted and I'll have tea and something to eat ready for you."  
  
"Thank you Effie." The other pale hand appeared, cold as ice, colder again, the chill spreading up through Effie's hand past the wrist as she shivered despite the smell of the heating coming on and the roar of it through the flat that'd be a furnace before long. Isla took the bundle and smiled. "You're being so kind to me and I—I wish I remembered last night. I know this is a lot of trouble—"  
  
"Don't you worry about it, maybe once you've had a bit of time to get yourself tidied up you'll be able to put things together a bit better."  
  
"Aye." With a little nod, Isla followed Effie through, listened to the explanations of where this and that was, how to fight with a shower that had a fine middle ground between scalding and freezing. "I won't be long."  
  
"Take the time you need hen."  
  
Isla closed the door behind her but there was no sound of it being locked behind her before the shower turned on, Effie heading back through to go change herself out of the old things she wore for something less old and worn that wouldn't see her sweating away, an oven ready turkey. Wasting time. Puttering back through to get the tea in the pot, scrounging up a plate of biscuits that she dithered over; what was the advice for someone in that state anyway, did you feed them or not, was Isla in shock at all, did that count for whatever she happened to be? Ghost or not? The shower had stopped running once she got the cosy on the teapot, a kick in the backside to get her through to the sitting room with the tray, all of it laid out and ready while she waited for Isla to emerge again as she tried to settle her thoughts again over what she might be dealing with.   
  
When she'd been young, and it was an odd thing to remember, to cast her mind as far back as she had to, but her granny had told her all sorts of stories even though she'd been of a deeply religious sort that had embedded themselves, engrained in her now as deeply as they had ever been. It was odd, the things that stuck with you, the things that drifted away. Names and faces jumbled up, repeating a story, but sat by her granny Mona's knee with her lilting Irish accent that hadn't changed even in all the years since she'd come in search of a better life she still remembered the stories she'd brought with her packed along with her rosary beads. Maybe not a better life if they'd all ended up in the Calton but you stuck with your kind, but when there wasn't food to be had then what choices were there? Effie counted herself lucky she was too small to remember the war, only a babe in arms when the blitz had come over Glasgow, spared the memories some of her elder brothers and sisters carried with them the rest of their days, old, old scars and fault lines same as their stranger of a father had staggered home and in the tenement door with.  
  
"Hi."  
  
Isla interrupted her thoughts as they turned on themselves on a steady road to nowhere dressed a bit more sensibly now and with the towel wrapped around her hair as she took a seat in the armchair closest to the electric fire. Effie wasn't staring, that'd be rude, but she didn't have any pink about the cheeks from the shower.  
  
"I left my dress hanging up in the shower, I don't know what I'm supposed to do with it really."   
  
"Don't worry about it, though I suppose a thing like that's a dry clean job."  
  
"Probably but I couldn't tell you where a dry cleaners even is." Isla laughed, taking a biscuit when the plate was offered – pink wafer was always a good solid choice – as Effie poured tea. "Just milk thanks."  
  
Clutching her own cup close once she'd poured it, Effie inhaled the steam and watched Isla do likewise, buying herself a little more time. How did you phrase this? None of what she'd done so far had prepared her for it, none of the training came anywhere close to what to do when you brought home a dead girl that walked and talked and smiled same as any living girl. "Are you feeling a bit better with a shower now? I mean finding anybody down there like that—you didnae even have your shoes."  
  
"I must've fallen out of them with that dress," Isla laughed but it was watery, a recognisable edge from daughters and sons, granddaughters, grandsons, all of them and more ready to spill their sorrows to a willing ear over tea and some sort of sweet. A gentle bribery without urging, just patient waiting. Effie had no other place to be after all. "At least…I think I fell. I was coming home. I was coming home, somebody's party I didn't even want to go but I went to be social y'know?"  
  
Effie nodded, sipping her tea. Isla did then pulled a face, putting the cup down. "Everything all right?"  
  
"It doesn't taste of anything." She took a bite of the wafer, almost dropping it before she set it down next to her cup with those pale hands that were shaking until they were folded into her lap nice and neat as you pleased. "That doesn't—why doesn't it taste of anything?"  
  
"Take a breath," Effie only realised what she'd said once she had, the foolishness of it and perhaps the cruelty too as her cup went down with a clatter, tea sloshing over the rim and onto the coaster in her haste to take her hands – still two blocks of ice but at least the lassie didn't pull away, bottom lip wobbling but the tears were held at bay. "Do you know what I do, Isla? Well I'll tell you. My Hector bless his soul, he passed a few years back now and he had a boat. He loved it and so did I, I grew up in the Calton and Hector he was a Govan boy, used to be a shipbuilder back when that was work.   
  
"So he had this boat until he died and we had the river, the two of us, and I thought I could do something with this boat because God knows I'll go mad if it's just me doing whatever it is folk thing old women or widows or both are meant to be doing wi' themselves. Anyway," she took a breath herself, rubbing her fingers over the backs of Isla's knuckles as the girl swallowed, leaning forward, the towel piled atop her head tipping precariously with the motion. "I take that boat and I go up and down the river to see if there's folk in need of help or to help look for bodies that might be out there. It's not always a kind world out there and it's easy to get into trouble without even going looking for it by the water. Everyone deserves a helping hand. Knowing that someone's there. For them. For their loved ones."  
  
She didn't smell of shampoo or soap this close as might be expected straight from the shower. No, another smell clung to her still, the smell of the river, of old leaves, of stagnant water and if she had showered she'd have dried herself but same as she'd been coming to the flat in the first place, her skin was damp, not dripping but wet enough to be noticeable.   
  
"I'd climbed up on top of Jamaica Bridge, it was so _stupid_ I don't know why. Why do I remember now?"  
  
"I don't know hen, maybe you want to, maybe it's easier, it comes when it comes. I'm not here to judge."  
  
"The do was at The Laurieston, I was going to Central for my train home and I wanted to see the lights on the bridge…I wanted to see the _lights_…" Isla broke down, chin dropped to her chest as she sobbed in earnest, broken choked off gasps of the drowned escaping her as Effie elbowed her way out of her seat to gather the girl up, rocking her back and forth gently, rubbing her back despite the chill that clawed at her as if she were being dragged under the water's surface even here on dry land in the warmth of the flat. It was a long time before she could speak again but her face wasn't blotchy and wouldn't ever be again, Effie had some knowledge of all that same as she knew that the dress would be gone from the shower as if it had never been hung there and she would be phoning the police about a body she'd found, could they come have a look please. "Will you say—just tell them it was an accident. That I'm sorry. I never meant to hurt them."  
  
"Of course darling, I promise. The river always gives back her dead."  
  


* * *

  
  
In the end there was the report. The thanks from the police. The family, tearful, devastated, but relieved to _know_, to not have to wonder the way that so many others did; accidents happened and there would be looking into the railings, into the buoys, all the usual. Awareness.  
  
Effie was left with the boat, with clothes that carried with them the smell of the river. A half-eaten pink wafer and barely sipped cup of tea to throw out. Stray sequins sparkling amidst the muck and silt to be washed away from the bath that she cried.  
  
Only sometimes Effie was not quite so alone in the boat. Oh it looked that way, an old dear too old to be rowing with her anorak and her grey hair out in all hours, in all weathers. But there was a girl in her party frock missing her shoes that she'd never found – though not for want of searching – who joined her from time to time to begin to point out all the rest.

**Author's Note:**

> Some of this is based on something I'm sure I watched years back about an incredible man named George Parsonage who works with the Glasgow Humane Society, here's a few links about him:
> 
> [x ](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/yZnmvkqslWTFpW8LgLQqRK/the-man-who-s-rescued-1500-people-from-the-river-clyde) [x](https://glasgowhumanesociety.com/riverman?start=60)   
[x](https://www.scotsman.com/news-2-15012/life-and-death-with-the-last-of-glasgow-s-rivermen-1-3139404)
> 
> And a few more for folks not familiar with places and so on discussed in this piece:  
[Tongland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongland_\(gang_area\))  
[The Calton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calton,_Glasgow)  
[Glasgow Effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_effect)  
[Jamaica Bridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Bridge,_Glasgow)
> 
> The Queen Elizabeth University Hospital aka The Death Star:  
[x](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-47495067), [x](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-46945516), [x](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-34743326), [x](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-34513486), [x](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-32890937)


End file.
